5 Ridiculous Sex Myths Everyone Believes

#3. College Is Where Girls Go Wild

For many kids raised in the cloistered confines of suburbia, college represents the first real chance for freedom. That means getting shitfaced, staying up late and, if you're a young woman, engaging in some sexual experimentation. The term "lesbian until graduation" didn't earn its own Wikipedia entry for nothing. Those liberated years of university life bring about a very real change for many women.

GettyChange is the bee's knees.

That's the accepted public perception, anyway.

But Actually ...

Unfortunately for our vast database of dorm-room-themed spank material, the truth is far less sexy. According to a recent study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (would it kill them to use a not-so-implicitly-horrifying name when studying hot girl-on-girl action?), women with bachelor's degrees were actually less likely to have dipped their toe in the pool of lesbian adventure than women who did not graduate from high school.

Of 13,500 responses, women aged 22 to 44 with college degrees admitted to having a same-sex relationship about 10 percent of the time, compared with 15 percent of women who didn't finish high school.

So how did we all get this so horribly wrong? Dan Savage, a Seattle-based gay sex columnist, weighed in on the article thusly:

"A lot of [college students] are out to prove something and want their effort to smash the patriarchy to be very visible ..."

GettyPlease note that the phrase "gay sex columnist" can mean two very different things.

That is, women with college educations aren't more likely to have had those experiences, they're just more likely to have talked about them because they think it makes them special. They like to brag about their girly time sexploits because they think they're reinventing the sexual wheel and can't wait to tell their less enlightened peers all about it.

But hey, at least they're using that college degree for its exact intended purpose ... to instill themselves with a false sense of intellectual superiority. Money well spent, indeed.

GettyYou can put a price on this, but not until a few months after graduation.

#2. Men and Women Reach Their Sexual Peak at Different Times

We've all heard some variation of this myth, which claims that while men meet their sexual peak in their teens and early 20s, women don't hit the same apex of horniness until a decade or more later. Science that justifies cougars -- what could be wrong with that?

Well, everything, as it turns out. This myth likely originates from the fact that testosterone peaks at 18 and estrogen peaks in a woman's mid-20s. So boys tend to be at their age of maximum boning right around the freshman year of college, while girls don't hit the same peak until they're old enough to appreciate the humor of Courteney Cox.

But Actually ...

According to Dr. Marc Goldstein of Cornell University, hormones don't decide when you hit your sexual apex. People aren't soda bottles that just reach a point of maximum pressure and then pop. Your "sexual peak" has more to do with your attitude toward sex and level of experience, which is one reason millions of awkward young men spend their entire sexual prime on a computer.

GettyThe other reason is epic loot.

Women who are more mature are more likely to be comfortable with their sexuality because they've had the opportunity to explore it. Women's sex drives are more vulnerable to social pressures, so the further they get from the drama and "slut shaming" of high school, the more open they'll feel. Women who have been adults longer than The Office (U.S.) has run are more likely to know how to have sex safely. And they're far distanced enough from the bullshit drama of adolescent love lives to enjoy the experience.

Getty"Each eye wrinkle stands for a thousand orgasms."

#1. Sex Sells

Sex has an incredible ability to compel attention, there's no arguing with that. Tits and ass (or suggestively tight banana hammocks) guarantee eyeballs on the screen. That's the way things are now, that's the way they were for our horny grandparents and that's the way they'll be for our equally horny (but much freakier) kids. So, if you want to sell beer, or cars or body spray, stick some boobs on the screen.

It's an equation man has understood since he first learned that erections weren't snakes.

But Actually ...

Once again, science is here to shrivel our erection of lies with the cold swimming pool of truth. Sex is a great way to get the audience to watch. But "watching" isn't the same as "buying."

Studies show that less than 10 percent of men who were exposed to sexual advertising could even recall the actual brand the ad existed to promote. And that's men, the gender that's supposed to get brainwashed by anything titillating, including the word "titillating." For women, sexual advertising cut brand recall in half.

Getty"Damn, I could really go for some of that tit beer."

Rather than being Miracle-Gro for brand awareness, sex appears to have a sort of "vampire effect." It numbs the brain to anything that doesn't get your Captain Hornblower in a Tallywicket (we're not sure if that's an actual euphemism). This trend even extends to video games, the one realm where we'd expect shallow smut peddling to have a real advantage. And yet that's not what we've seen. Games featured by Playboy tend to underperform, and titles that flaunt sexy characters (Age of Conan, we're looking at you) don't do any better for it.

Another study of beer ads found that throwing scantily clad women into the picture did nothing to increase consumer recall. Interestingly, they also found that pairing the ads with steamy (oh God, forgive us for using that adjective) shows like Sex and the City further decreased recall.

OK, so sex doesn't sell products. But it still gets you watching, which means that adding a little bit of the moist ballet to your new movie guarantees it some measure of success. Look at movies like Basic Instinct, Starship Troopers or Black Swan. The promise of naked boob is the only thing that got half their audiences to buy a ticket. Or so we'd think.

Movie scientists with the University of California studied over 900 films released last decade and found not one case where sex and nudity improved a movie's box office reception or sales. We're assuming Halle Berry's bare breasts' featured role in Swordfish was the exception, but we can't confirm that.

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